Bradbury's Monorail Idea is so Old School
Tammy Bruce and others aren't going to like this but it has to be said. Ray Bradbury is an excellent writer who has penned many classics but at age 87 he is a blabbering fool when it comes to transportation issues in Los Angeles.For years Bradbury has had a major woody for monorails as a transportation solution in Los Angeles even though there are many, many operational and logistical reasons why such a system wouldn't work. LAist has video of Bradbury once again rattling on about monorails. If you want to explore something beyond busways, light rail and subways personal rapid transit (PRT) might be the perfect hybrid of mass transit and the independent LA car culture.
Lets just not hope people use their sentimental attachment to Bradbury as a reason to implement a poor transportation decision. We already have folks like Zev Yarovslasky who can make these poor decisions on his own.
Labels: monorails, personal rapid transit, ray bradbury, transportation, zev yarovslasky
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 7/12/2007 12:04:00 AM
14 Comments:
This is the guy who despite living in So Cal for years never drove a car. We are supposed to listen to him on transportation issues? Monorails are nice for Disneyland circa 1958. Even the privately built monorail system built for the Las Vegas strip has been a fiasco.
You folks might check out www.prtstrategies.com for a number of ideas on how PRT could be implemented in southern California. It can happen!
There are a lot of places in LA where PRT could work quite well. Light rail costs $35 million per mile, Monorail is anywhere from $50 to $200 million per mile and Subway construction costs $350 million per mile.
PRT could be built for about $4-5 million per mile. You could connect the Green Line to all the terminal at LAX for less than $15 million.
LAX has 60 million passengers per year. Figure if 5% of them, or about 3 million per year took the Green Line and the PRT to the airport. If you charged 25 cents each way, that would bring in enough money to pay for the construction in about 10 years.
That would make it attractive to private industry to build and operate it.
A similar line could be built from the NoHo Red Line station to Burbank Airport. The City of Burbank currently operates a shuttle there that probably costs at least a million per year. Over time, PRT would be cheaper, more enviornmentally friendly and more attractive to users.
Oh and again the NoHo to Burbank PRT could also be done as a public-private partnership.
>>For years Bradbury has had a major woody for monorails as a transportation solution in Los Angeles even though there are many, many operational and logistical reasons why such a system wouldn't work.
And what are those reasons?
I can think of a lot of reasons why 'at-grade' rail solutions have many, many operational and logistical problems such as people and vehicles getting run over by trains, the added traffic congestion at intersections where trains cross, noise, also rail right of ways are ugly and rarely kept clean of trash, weeds, etc. A rail through your neighborhood is certain to drive down property values.
Underground rail has it issues as well particularly cost and the impacts on businesses during construction.
Elevated monorails are actually quite nice looking, don't impact traffic, quieter, use less land..
From the Wikipedia link:
"The company also claims that their design works best as a system with a 5 mile radius...."
That sounds like an excellent fit for Los Angeles!
And the recommendations for it being used in and out of major airports is fine, but that does not solve a county-wide, or even inter-county, transportation problem. It's a micro solution to a macro problem, unless I'm missing something about PRT's benefits in the larger picture.
In 1963, fresh off their installation of the monorail at the Seattle world's Fair, the Alweg company proposed to build the first leg of a monorail system from LAX to downtown at their expense, using existing rights-of-way, including the freeway shoulders. Cost? estimated at less than $100 million. They were turned down.
Considering all the expense undertaken to widen freeways, extend subways and add more bus traffic, a monorail method of transportation should not be out of the question.
Because an idea is old does not make it bad. DaVinci and Ben Franklin had ideas that were "old" and they evolved to routine parts of our lives.
A small bit of money here for a study, a worthwhile credible one, not a money-sucking project financing favored persons, might just show that this is a feasible idea for viable means of transit.
In the '70s, the Aerospace Corporation in Santa Monica developed a proposal for blanketing all of LA with PRT. But Mayor Bradley and his transportation aide, Norm Emerson, felt that LA needed a heavy-rail (subway) regardless of the costs. The PRT technology has never been tested or proven on such a large scale. But it is a cool idea, and might work if there was a desire to pursue it.
Where ish The Transit Coalition on thish issue?! I demand a reshponse!
I don't care what you think of Ray Bradbury's transportation ideas, but to call him a "blabbering fool" is HIGHLY DISRESPECTFUL. This makes you a DISRESPECTFUL FOOL, so take it back!
When is the City (Mayor, Council and Supervisors) going to stop acting like kindergartners and form a cohesive single unit of leadership, sharing one vision for the region? Example: Selling Air Rights without having a prospectus that defines what is required of the developer, so the bidders know what is expected of them, and there is a formal document from which to evaluate the bid and the progress of the construction project? No, the City Council has a historic manner in which it likes to be courted, so that they can consume precious time asking for enhancements over trite negotiations and barter deals in order to get the project done. If the City took the time to establish a “master plan” that looked out 15 years, like any regular For Profit business does, delineating phases, strict definitive rules and regulations, then maybe the City Government could focus on issues like Education, Traffic, Security/Safety and Infrastructure. No, the elected leadership in LA would rather argue and back-stab, wasting tax payer dollars, increasing the cost of the project, delaying its completion or making progress at all. I wonder what will happen as the city implodes with the increasing population? As the atmosphere becomes more hostile daily on the roads, parking lots, side-walks and play grounds. Hello City Politicians, play like the nice children you are acting like, because money may not buy your re-election.
1. Isn’t it strange that the community has not heard or seen any progress on the re-development of Hollywood Park?
2. Why isn’t our local news media not publicizing or questioning the lack of disclosure by the owners, and that they are behind and paying for the anti-Tribal Gaming propositions?
3. Shouldn’t Hollywood Park and Wilson Meany Sullivan be at the bottom of the ads as a disclaimer?
4. How much money did the employees and partners of the firm contribute from their own check books?
5. Using Taxpayer money to fund the project through the creation of a Communities Facilities District (Mello Ruse).
6. Why does WMS even care about the propositions, when the firm has already begun the process to tear Hollywood Park down.
Los Angeles Times Jan 10, 2008 - why has there been no follow up on the part of the LA Times to disclose the truth?
Fancher declined to be interviewed. But Joe Lang, a consultant and lobbyist for Fancher, stopped short of saying the bulldozers will start if voters vote to uphold the compacts. But that would be a "serious blow" to Hollywood Park's ability to draw bettors, he said.
The compacts bar other gambling within a specified radius of each tribe's operations. And without the revenue that slot machines or other games can bring, Lang said, California tracks will have smaller purses than those offered in other states that do allow slots, attracting smaller fields of horses and reducing the appeal of the races.
"These compacts, if they go into effect, will further impede our ability to compete with other states by limiting the options we have for boosting our purses," Lang said. "Clearly this will create another barrier for all tracks, including Hollywood Park, and must be seriously considered as we plan for the future."
Dorn and other local officials said they would welcome the proposed mixed-use development, even as they would be saddened by the loss of a track with a legendary history.
Well, I guess ALL you know it alls know more than Sydney, Central London, Singapore, Osaka, Berlin, Jakarta...and the list goes on.
A PRT for almost 4 million people...yeah, that will sure get them out of their cars!
Commonsense could be spared from Mr. Bradbury, as it is in short supply on this blog.
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